


The Midwife's Tale

by TheVeryLastValkyrie



Category: Robin Hood (BBC 2006)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-14
Updated: 2016-04-14
Packaged: 2018-06-02 05:49:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,000
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6553486
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheVeryLastValkyrie/pseuds/TheVeryLastValkyrie
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“Marian of Knighton is going to marry Robin of Locksley, and no other, unless the stars have started raining down from a purple sky since last I ventured out.” Their lives through her eyes: birth, death, and love.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Midwife's Tale

**Author's Note:**

> I would class the below as pre-series, pre-series, post 1x08 and post 2x05.

_I'll be damned if a boy I delivered sneaks in and finishes off one of my patients!_

**.**

“A girl,” Matilda announces approvingly, handing her over to the exhausted woman in the great bed. “A _healthy_ girl,” she amends, as the baby’s cries rise up to the thatch and go out of the room via the crack beneath the door. “With a pair of lungs on her like a fishwife, my goodness. A girl for you, and a boy for my lady of Locksley.”

“A boy?” Kate’s violet-blue eyes are shining.

“A ladies’ man. Came out with that look about him. There, now.” The midwife smooths thick, damp locks of black hair off the new mother’s forehead, smiling in response to the pale hand which closes around hers. “Boys are boys, and good for the passing on of titles and such, but girls are precious.” She peers into the small, scrunched up face, swollen and inexplicably delightful, and guesses that the eyes will be just like Kate’s. Matilda has a sense about such things. “And yours will be a beauty, my lady, you mark my words.”

“And when is your turn to be?”

Matilda rests a fond hand on her swelling stomach. “I’ve a while to go yet.” And she’ll be a late baby, and undoubtedly a she. “Now, let’s get everything in order, shall we, and then you can have your husband in. _No doubt he’s waiting just outside the door_ ,” she continues, too loudly.

Kate laughs.

The floorboards creak.

**.**

Matilda lays out the body of Kate, lady of Knighton Hall, wife of Edward, mother of Marian. Her own tears fall as readily as theirs, plopping into the water she uses to wash the fair hands, the pretty face. Those two ever did everything together, my lady of Locksley and my lady of Knighton, and there’s poor Robin haunting the woods like a ghost, not wanting to see his mother’s chair or the embroidery she’ll never finish, and now Marian, his partner-in-crime, is his partner indeed.

“Oh, my lady,” she says gently, touching the bloodless cheek.

Not much gets past Matilda, not even the soft footsteps of a child. Marian understands this, young as she is, that she’s being given leave to remain in the silent upstairs room where her mother’s hair is carefully brushed, where she’s wrapped first in a gown and then in a shroud, where the candles are snuffed, where she’s pronounced ready. She cries silently, cries with the numb composure of a grown woman who’s received a mortal wound.

“Is she in Heaven?” She asks, in a voice thin and piping like a reed.

“Yes, my love.”

“With Robin’s mother?”

“Yes, my love.”

“He’s so angry. I’m not angry, Matilda, I’m sad.”

She gathers the child into her, she who was never taught to put on airs by the good lady on the table.  “I know, sweet. So is he.” Rocking her a little, though she’s almost too big for it now. “So is he.”

**.**

“Rot,” she replies roundly.

“But it’s true, mother!”

“True it may be, Rosa, but it’s still rot.” She bangs her point home with a pound of the pestle down on top of a garlic bulb. “Lady Marian will marry Guy of Gisborne when the snow falls in June, and not a moment sooner.”

“But she’s accepted him!”

“Rot.”

“ _Mother!_ ”

Matilda finishes pulverising the garlic to a paste before turning to her daughter. “Firstly,” she begins, wiping chapped hands on her apron. “Betrothals are made and broken off all the time, and but one betrothal out of ten results in a wedding.” Going to one of her numerous chests, she retrieves a worn pot of sheep grease and begins to smear it over her broad palms. “Secondly, according to you, my lady has agreed to marry that greasy lack-land when King Richard returns from the Holy Land, which could be weeks, months or years as far as either you or I know. Thirdly and finally –” She snatches the bowl of stripped rosemary stalks from her daughter’s lap. “Marian of Knighton is going to marry Robin of Locksley, and no other, unless the stars have started raining down from a purple sky since last I ventured out.”

Rosa still looks mutinous. “He’s an outlaw, Mother, and she wouldn’t marry him if he weren’t. She’s accepted Gisborne.”

“Rot. I know these things. I’ve known they’d be married since they were born.” Rosa’s mother nods sagely. “They had that look about them.”

**.**

The night is full of noises. It’s the absence of them that tips the midwife off as she sits up late, soothing her granddaughter. It’s that quality of quiet which directs her gaze towards the window rather than the bolted door.

“Try harder,” she tells him when his booted feet hit the floor.

“If I hadn’t wanted you to see me, you wouldn’t have.”

Matilda harrumphs, but peaceably. She grips Robin’s chin when he crosses over to her chair. “What have I said about this beard?” Oh, definitely a ladies’ man with that smile, her spring Robin. Kissing him noisily on the forehead, she remembers his mother, who only pretended to be vexed by her son’s mischievous manner. “Or do you keep it like this for her? Does she like you less dignified? Does it make it less cold when you push her in the stream?”

His face glows in the light of the fire embers. “How is it that you know everything?”

“Because I have eyes in my head, my lord of Locksley.” She settles back, adjusting the baby, stretching her legs. “And are you going to marry my lady Marian? You’re not too old to go over my knee, mind, so think before you answer.”

Robin’s blue-green eyes are glowing too. “I don’t have to think. I know.”

“So it’s that way, is it?”

“It’s always been that way.”

Matilda harrumphs again. “I’ve been waiting over twenty years for the two of you,” she says. “Don’t make me wait much longer.”


End file.
